DIY Gift Bow

It’s easy to make a DIY gift bow out of magazine paper. They look just like the bows you see in stores. Upcycle some magazines or paper to make your own. You’ll never have to buy another gift bow!

You can use any paper to make a DIY gift bow. This would be a great upcycle for reusing gift wrap or old maps! We made these gift bows from upcycled magazine paper.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Materials to Make a DIY Gift Bow

Upcycled paper (try magazine pages, wrapping paper etc.)

Scissors

Ruler

Pencil

Tape and/or a stapler

How To Make a DIY Gift Bow

Cut upcycled paper in 3/4 inch strips. You’ll need 10 strips to make your gift bow. A standard magazine page is just the right size.

From your 10 strips you’ll have 4 groups: 3 that are full length, 3 that are an inch shorter, 3 that are 2 inches shorter and 1 strip that is 3 inches long.

Fold the strips into half. This will serve as a marker for the middle of the strips and will be helpful for the next steps.

Take a strip and turn it over. Fold a loop and bring the end of your strip on top of the folded middle marker. Tape or staple it down. The good side of your paper will now be on the top/outside of the loop.

Repeat this for the other side of the paper strip. You’ll end up with a figure eight.

Repeat the process for the other 8 long strips. Take your short strip and circle loop it.

You’ll now have 3 groups of the same sized figure 8s. Take each of these groups and arrange them into a star. Tape or staple the star groups together. Fit the circle loop inside of the smallest star group.

Insert the star groups into one another. The smallest goes on top, followed by the middle sized and then the largest one is on the bottom. Tape loops work really well for attaching the star groups together.

That’s it! It’s really that easy to make a DIY gift bow. To complete our upcycled gift wrap, we reused brown craft paper and added a spring of evergreen.

Here’s a handy recap of the steps:

We chose to use a page from a surfing magazine for our DIY gift bow. What can we say, we just love the ocean. Turns out we’ve gotten used to the the Southern Hemisphere holidays which happen during the summer.